The symposium entitled "Multivalent Drug Design" will occur at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, on March 27-31, 2011. This symposium, which will be part of the program offered by the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, has been organized to discuss advances in research about multivalent interactions as they pertain to biological recognition events. Scientists from academia, government, and industry will share the latest results on the development of multivalent inhibitors in areas that have been problematic for traditional small molecule therapeutics development. This proposal requests $11,050 for partial support of the symposium. Financial support from NIGMS will allow us to provide travel grants for four graduate students and/or postdoctoral students to attend the conference. In addition, support from NIH will be used to offset travel and hotel expenses for six symposium speakers. Discussions at the symposium will focus on fundamental advances in the development of multivalent therapeutic agents. Diseases with multivalent aspects include AIDS, hepatitis, influenza, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, tuberculosis, Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, diabetes, and cancer;multivalent therapeutics for such diseases should address many problems that traditional monovalent materials cannot. Scientific research conducted in multivalency enables many of the technology advances that have direct impact on public health. The expected outcomes of this symposium are to provide a unique opportunity for early-career scientists to gain an appreciation for the role that multivalent approaches can play in therapeutic development and to initiate and build on collaborations globally in many topical areas, including those that are essential to advances in biomedicine. Opportunities for interdisciplinary interactions will be significantly enhanced by the symposium. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The ability to modulate multivalent interactions would provide control over countless biological processes. Successful discovery and development of new and exciting agents would help address major medical needs. The increasing expense and risk in small molecule drug discovery has highlighted the need for new approaches and technologies that can improve the success rate of drug candidates and reduce their attrition in development. This symposium will focus on new approaches and enabling technologies that will contribute to the identification of such agents.